The NIH Director

BRAIN Initiative: NIH High-Priority Research Areas for Funding

President Obama announced in April an audacious initiative to revolutionize
our understanding of the human brain and called for $110 million
in his fiscal year 2014 budget to support the effort. The BRAIN (Brain
Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative is being
launched by NIH, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency),
and the National Science Foundation, with each organization identifying
high-priority areas of research in support of their respective missions
to advance the science.

I’m very pleased to have approved recommendations made by my Advisory
Committee to the Director (ACD) on initial high-priority research areas
within the BRAIN Initiative for NIH funding in FY2014. The goal of this
research is to advance our understanding of how the brain functions so
that we can improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases. Over
the next several months, NIH will initiate requests for applications
with the intent to award $40 million of NIH funding in FY2014 toward
these focused areas of research. This funding supplements
approximately $5.5 billion of NIH funding slated for neuroscience
research in the same year.

I wanted to specially thank the BRAIN Working Group, comprised of leading experts in the field of neuroscience and led by Drs. Cori Bargmann and Bill Newsome, for their diligent work in developing an excellent set of recommendations. I encourage you to read the interim report to learn more.